What is Food Processing?
What is the Essential Commodities Act?
What is the Essential Services Maintenance Act?
Do you know that humans need proper proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals for optimum development and functioning?
What is dietary fiber?
How much fiber do you need?
Water: How much should you drink every day?
Have you heard of consumer affairs' food and public distribution destroying stale food items?
Have you heard of consumer affairs' food and public distribution destroying dairy products, vegetables, fruits, and other food items?
Have you yourself experienced food being destroyed or stale food being thrown away?
Have you noticed people who lack proper daily intake of protein, carbohydrate, fats, vitamins, minerals?
Have you noticed that the Public Health department reported illness due to consumption of contaminated food items?
How could this be prevented?
How can food items be preserved?
What are the different ways of food processing and preservation?
How can the consumer get quality food all year round?
By proper food processing.
Here are the solutions.
What items need robotic machinery for filling, closing, sealing, encapsulating, or labeling cans, bottles, boxes, bags, or other containers?
What materials are required for such a plant?
When should you send food items to a factory for processing?
Where is the best place to locate such a factory?
What should be the area of the factory?
Here are further guidelines.

What is Food Processing?
Food processing is the transformation of raw ingredients into food, or of food into other forms. Food processing typically takes clean, harvested crops or butchered animal(consumable) products and uses these to produce attractive, consumable and often long shelf-life food products. Similar processes are used to produce animal feed.
Here are further guidelines.

Food may not be manufactured in the home for distribution. Food sold at the place of production is under the inspection of the local Public Health Department. Food manufactured for wholesale distribution is under the supervision of the South Carolina. Department of Agriculture and must have a label approved from this state agency. Once the processing facility is built, a representative from this agency will make an inspection before start-up.

In addition to state requirements, most specialty foods are subject to federal regulations and International because products cross state boundaries during distribution. A food processing operation should be designed and operated in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) regulations, which are available from FDA offices. All food plants, except meat and poultry, are subject to inspection by FDA to ensure compliance with these regulations. Specialty foods containing meat or poultry ingredients fall under the jurisdiction of USDA. Meat and poultry food plants should be constructed and operated according to the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program that can be obtained from the South Carolina Meat & Poultry Inspection Department.

There are specific GMP regulations for canned low-acid and acidified foods. Commercial food manufacturers are required to register each new product with the FDA and file a full description (called a scheduled process) of the processes to be employed in the manufacture of the product. Copies of these regulations, the registration form and the scheduled process form can be obtained from the FDA offices. In addition, the processor must report any instances of spoilage; must have an established product recall plan; must have all operators of thermal-processing systems trained by attending a Better Process Control School at an approved university; and must maintain complete records of plant operations.

Basics of Product Development

Entrepreneurs should follow these basic steps in developing new food products.

Idea Stage:

The following questions need to be answered:

Does the product satisfy a consumer need?
Will it return a profit?
Will it be acceptable to consumers, wholesalers and retailers alike?
Is it unique?
Does it provide a new service to customers?
Do you have the production technology to develop the product?
Do you have the marketing skills to sell the product?
What products will it replace or compete against?

Development Stage: Food scientists are needed to solve shelf life and safety problems. They address questions such as: Will bacteria, mold, yeasts or pathogens be a concern?

Is the browning reaction (a chemical reaction between ingredients) a problem and, if so, can it be solved?

Is light a factor in product or quality deterioration? Can texture or mouth-feel be improved? Is rancidity a problem?

Taste Panel Stage: The taste panel stage should run concurrently with formula or recipe development. Using sensory evaluation test forms, an experienced panel should check quality parameters such as color, texture, appearance and flavor at various stages of product formulation to distinguish good from undesirable traits.

Consumer Sampling Stage: The consumer sampling stage is often neglected by food processors but can give valuable information about the products potential success. Actual sales after tasting reinforce the questionnaire. For instance, if 100 people say they will purchase but only five purchase the product, there may be some question about the truthfulness of the answers. Commercial demand for the product should be evaluated to determine if sufficient volume will be produced and sold to make the venture economically feasible.

Shelf-Life Stage: The shelf-life stage is extremely important because a processor must know how long a new product will keep under a variety of temperatures and other environmental conditions. Shelf-life loss may be due to chemical or microbial (bacteria, mold and yeast) spoilage. The studies are done by raising the temperature of the packaged product above normal storage conditions (110 to 120 °F). Although this is not as good as a prolonged shelf-life study at normal temperatures (75 to 80 °F), it does give some indication of product shelf life. Lot codes for recall and product liability are based on these studies.

Packaging Stage: This stage is especially important because the package often sells a new product. Consumers want colorful, attractive, conveniently packaged forms. Packaging should not impart flavor to the product or react chemically with the food. It should be lightweight, economical and resistant to tearing.

Production Stage: The production stage includes making plans for a production line to manufacture the product. Do not arrange a full-scale production line until after successfully test marketing a new product. Many entrepreneurs will have their products co-packed by an existing plant for test marketing. The production line should be set up according to a blueprint of its layout. Keep in mind drainage, ventilation, waste disposal, lighting, equipment size and flow, energy conservation, safety, sanitation, ease of cleaning, storage area, and compliance with government regulations.

Processing controls must be established to ensure consistent quality during production as set forth by product standards (specifications). Likewise, quality control procedures must be developed to determine if the standards are being met during production and to know when to take corrective action to prevent economic losses due to deviations and to ensure product safety.

Test Marketing Stage: The test marketing stage for processors involves introducing their new product into a limited area, such as a large metropolitan city. It is important to select a site with a population made up of many ethnic groups and income levels. If the product fails, another product can be tried. If the product succeeds, it is distributed in stages to progressively larger areas (statewide, regional, or in the case International demand, International only).

Commercialization Stage: The commercialization is the final step in determining the success or failure of a new product. Most food companies sell mainly to the institutional trade and if they sell to retail outlets, it is usually to privately owned stores or small chains. Larger chains will not take on a new food product unless the product is heavily advertised by the company. The buyer for a large chain must be convinced that the product is good and that advertising exists.

Ingredients

The success of any new specialty product depends on the quality of its flavor, color and texture, its stability under various storage conditions, and its safety. Often, additives may be needed to maintain or enhance product quality throughout and after processing. Additives should not be used to disguise faulty or inferior manufacturing processes or to conceal damage or spoilage. Only the minimum amount of an additive necessary to achieve desired results should be used.

Government regulatory agencies such as the FDA and USDA closely monitor the use and levels of additives in food products. The safety of food additives is constantly being reviewed, so food processors must pay close attention to current regulatory statutes governing particular additives.
Food Processing

Food preservation through processing is an extremely broad area in food science and methods include refrigeration, freezing, pasteurization, canning, fermentation, concentration, irradiation and dehydration.

Quality Control/Sanitation

Quality control is imperative to the successful development of any food product. Consumers perceive food safety as an integral component of food quality control. The food processor must establish a food safety program including in-process procedures that ensure consistent quality and meet product specifications. It is important to obtain product liability insurance for your protection.

Packaging

Food packaging protects the food from the surrounding environment, thus preventing contamination, damage and deterioration. Today, convenience is a major factor in packaging. The food package also plays a crucial role in communication. In the marketing of new products, packaging conveys the nature of the food and directions for its use and it attracts and persuades the buyer. Color coordination, artistic design, ingredient labeling, portion size and safety all influence a consumers decision to buy.

Labels

Food labeling was originally designed by the government to protect consumers from fraud. Recent surveys indicate that consumers use labels to identify and avoid perceived health hazards rather than to seek and obtain benefits (does the product contain preservatives, fats, cholesterol?). A label consists of the principal display panel, used to attract consumers, and the information panel, placed immediately to the right of the principal display panel.

An integral part of quality control is a system for coding new food products. The product must be identifiable to the manufacturer by the year and day it was packed and by the batch number,

Any method of coding that is recognizable by the processor is acceptable. Alphabetical letters are often used to identify the month a product was packed. Dates are used to indicate the manufacture date. An example of a code is 24J0521,  where 21 indicates the 21st day of the year; J is the month (January); 05 is the year packed (2005); 2 is the plant location; and 5 indicates the First hour of the shift. Accurate record keeping of these codes allows a manufacturer to trace the cause of consumer complaints, control distribution and inventory, ensure proper product rotation, and affect a recall if necessary.

The next step is to determine which system of distribution is best suited to you and your products.

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Machinery for filling, closing, sealing, capsuling, or labeling
cans, bottles, boxes, bags or other containers.
Advantages of Robots in Food Manufacturing

Robots remove the possibility of worker injury by being able to perform the same task multiple times.

The standard uses for robots in the food manufacturing environment are in packaging or case-packing, and palletizing, as well as high-speed pick and place applications.

When it comes to the packaging of products, robots generally fit into three main categories: pick and place applications, feed placement and palletizing.

For the packaging of food items, where speed, consistency or high levels of repetition are concerned, the robot almost always wins over humans in terms of efficiency.

Robots are equipped with intelligent vision systems. This ensures that wherever products are placed on the belt the robot is able to pick them up, so that wastage is minimal.

The grippers and and vacuum tools used by these robots have also been further developed and good packaging companies will offer a selection of these.

The airflow vacuum tool is ideal for handling goods with damageable surfaces because it can pick up products without touching them.